NH State Budget - Conflicts of Interest?

 

There is all manner of jiggery pokery going on with  the current state-budget-in-progress. Governor Sununu inserted the Hyde Amendment into his governor's budget, despite his attempts to convince us all that he's "pro-choice." 

That's why this piece caught my eye. Garry Rayno for InDepthNH.org

 "Subcommittees of the House Finance Committee have decided to end or drastically reduce two education programs Gov. Chris Sununu touted in his budget address.

One is a student loan forgiveness program for those in high demand professions like health-care that would use revenues generated by the state’s scholarship program, and the other the governor’s School Infrastructure Fund intended to help schools improve internet connectivity and building safety.

Meeting Monday, the committee’s Division II approved an amendment that removed the loan forgiveness program from House Bill 2, instead allowing New Hampshire College Tuition Savings Plan Advisory Commission to decide how to allocate the funds between the UNIQUE program and the Governor’s Scholarship program."

NH has the highest percentage of college students that graduate with debt.  NH has the second highest student debt out of 50 states . Only Connecticut is higher. Some student loan forgiveness would be a welcome relief for NH students - the kind that might allow them to stay in NH, rather than taking their talents and moving to states where higher paying jobs are. These student loan forgiveness programs that are being removed were regarded favorably by Governor Sununu. Whoever is wielding the scalpel doesn't care about that, which is interesting in itself. (What faction of the NH GOP doesn't care much for the governor?) 

This is the membership of the House Finance Committee:

Rep. Jess Edwards (R-Free State) is  on the Finance Committee. He's also the Chair of Finance Division III. 

Like many state representatives, Jess Edwards has a job. The state representative salary of $100 a year isn't exactly a living wage. This is from his Linkedin page: 

He works for Credit Adjudstments, Inc.  What do they do?

Who else works there? Check out their executive team:

  Representative Jason Osborne (R-Free State) is also the House Majority Leader. 

In a 400 member House, where there are no real ethics rules, there are bound to be all sorts of conflicts of interest. I don't mean to imply that these Reps are up to anything unseemly -  I just believe in transparency - especially in a legislature that has no real ethics rules. 

A budgetary provision that eliminates student loan forgiveness means that debt recovery agencies will still be profiting. If one works for a debt recovery agency - does this create a conflict of interest? 

As for NH House ethics: 

When legislators are about to vote on a bill that has a conflict of interest, they have to fill out a form. 

This sounds good so, far, right? Then comes part two:

Legislators fill out a form that essentially does nothing. If they choose, they can describe their conflict of interest and vote in their own interest anyhow. 

House Ethics Guidelines

I'm sure we can count on these honorable state representatives to do the right thing, fill out their forms, check off not participate, and recuse themselves from voting on the budget. 

The Big White Tent of the NH GOP

Photo from the Union Leader

Former NH State Rep. Robert Forsythe was arrested for assault and domestic violence. We learned about the arrest two months later, on August 26. The NH House Minority Leader had this to say:

“Domestic violence and assault are unacceptable and wrong and have no place in our society,” Hinch said. “Rep. Fosythe is the only person who can put pen to paper, and sign a resignation letter. The people of Boscawen have the right to ask him to resign if they believe he can no longer represent them. They also have the ability to vote for alternative candidates, including write-ins, if they believe they no longer want Rep. Forsythe to represent them in Concord. 

This translates as: domestic violence is bad, but we aren't going to ask him to resign. 

Later that same day, the governor released this statement:

“Sexual and domestic violence will not be tolerated in New Hampshire,” Republican Gov. Chris Sununu said in a statement. “Robert Forsythe must resign. Immediately."

That didn't even take 24 hours. The very next day, Forsythe resigned. 

On Friday, December 11, we learned that newly sworn in, freshman State Rep. Dawn Johnson was posting material from the neo-nazi website, Daily Stormer, on Facebook and Twitter. It took nearly 4 days for Governor Sununu to rouse himself long enough to make a statement:

 “Regardless of political party, we must condemn anti-Semitism and racism in all forms. These comments are repugnant and appalling,” Sununu said.

Note - he didn't even bring up resignation. It seems that sexual and domestic violence will not be tolerated in NH, but anti-Semitism and racism will. The second thing I notice is the sad attempt at both siderism. "Regardless of political party," is a big, steaming pantload, considering that the neo-nazi call is coming from inside his House. 

Representative Johnson has been quite clear that she has no intention of resigning. She's being represented by newly minted State Rep. Norm Silber, who was just sworn in for his second freshman term in the legislature. 

Let's take a brief side trip into the land of Silber. In 2017, during his first freshman term in the legislature,  he thought it was very amusing to try to defend Brett "kegstand" Kavanaugh from accusations of sexual assault by comparing his actions to playing spin-the-bottle. I wrote about Silber's rudeness to a voter in 2017; Silber Service, Tarnished. In addition to defending his neo-nazi colleague, he's also questioned Dick Hinch's autopsy report. Naturally, Silber and Johnson are both maskholes. 

Getting back to Silber's defense of his neo-nazi colleague -  in a letter to the Laconia Daily Sun, Silber offered up this excuse for Johnson's actions:

The internet can be a very dangerous place for adults as well as children. Just as it is easy for children to be lured into illicit sexual encounters or worse through the internet, so can adults inadvertently fall into terrible situations far beyond their intentions through the internet and email.

How many times have you mistakenly hit the “reply all” key in an email when you only wanted to respond to a single individual? How many times have you inadvertently clicked on a link, thinking it would lead you to one thing when it turned out to be quite different? How many times have we seen posts of fake photos that have been created or altered electronically solely to embarrass someone?

Dawn’s present situation is the second example of someone I know from the Lakes Region who posted or forwarded an internet link to a story that they thought in good faith was legitimate but that turned out to be of an anti-Semitic or racist origin. But I know that neither of those women are anti-Semites, racists, or haters.

That's a big helping of word salad with a side of florid dressing. It's also a bunch of hooey. No one finds themselves at the Daily Stormer by accident. A simple Google search doesn't take you there. As I discovered, you have to know where you're going, or do a deeper search.  

Johnson  posted a conspiracy theory from a neo-nazi website. That theory came with anti-Semitic and racist cartoons.  Silber is focusing on what the media has focused on, the source of the material. Johnson has "apologized" for the source. She has never tried to disavow the content. 

Roger Carroll of the Laconia Sun is the only reporter in the state who acknowledges this: 

Johnson apologized on her Facebook page for the source of the message – the Daily Stormer – but it was not clear that she disavowed the content of the post.

Be sure to read his story - it describes the material that Johnson posted, in great detail. 

Johnson has deleted her Facebook and Twitter accounts. I'm betting she's still plenty busy on Parler. 

To summarize, Johnson isn't going to resign. The Governor, who had no tolerance for domestic violence, has plenty of tolerance for neo-nazis. He's not going to call for her to resign. And when you come right down to it, how can he? This is what the Republican Party is now. These are his people. 

It's up to the rest of us to make them eat this, every single day for the next 2 years. 

A Tutorial for the NH Media on the Meaning of the Word Apology

This was October. Apparently a place opened up in the NH legislature. 

A Tutorial for the NH Media on the Meaning of the Word Apology

 Let us begin with a definition, paying particular attention to #1: 

Webster's defines an apology as an admission of error or discourtesy accompanied by an expression of regret. Hold that thought, we'll be coming back to it. 

On December 11, we learned that newly sworn in Republican State Representative Dawn Johnson from Laconia had posted an anti-Semitic theory (complete with pictures) on social media. The material she posted came from the Daily Stormer, a white nationalist/neo-nazi website. Rep. Johnson posted on Twitter, and tried to post on Facebook but her post was blocked, which she complained about on Facebook. (Johnson has since closed her mainstream social media accounts.) 

William Tucker, aka Miscellany Blue saw Johnson posting material from the Daily Stormer, and tweeted about it. NH is a small state, and the story spread quickly on social media. People began calling for her resignation. She's also on the school board in Laconia, which generated even more outrage. 

The story was covered by InDepthNH.org. Their story was picked up by Concord Patch and the Laconia Daily Sun. This was the headline:

From the InDepth story:

"In an apology posted to her social media accounts, Johnson apologized for sharing an article from the Neo-Nazi website, saying she was unaware of the source of the article.

“I have removed the report as it came from a source I do not agree with and thanks to a couple of people who showed me,” Johnson wrote."

The Union Leader  had a few paragraphs about the story in the State House Dome column, with the heading "New rep sorry."

From the UL story: 

“I want to apologize for a post I did the other day. I have removed the report as it came from a source I do not agree with and thanks to a couple of people (who) showed me,” Johnson wrote.

”I apologize again and will in the future look at the source closer before sharing content. God Bless and Happy Friday!”

As we learned above, an apology is an admission of error or discourtesy accompanied by an expression of regret.

Rep. Johnson expresses regret for posting "from a source she does not agree with." She does not, however, express regret for the CONTENT of what she posted.  This is not an apology. It's a weasely attempt at ass covering. 

Johnson got caught posting anti-semitic garbage from the Daily Stormer. (During Hanukkah!) She didn't accidentally fall on her keyboard, click on the Daily Stormer site and repost their material by accident. She went to that site on purpose, and reposted material that she agrees with. 

There is no way for her to apologize for that. What can she say, "Sorry I'm an anti-Semite, but I'll try to do better?" Instead, she made up a lame excuse, and the NH media was all too eager to accept it as an apology. Why? 

Because reporting it for what it is might upset people. Republican people, especially, and the NH media is always afraid to do that. 

The NHGOP Twitter account has been silent since December 11. So has the Twitter account of Governor Sununu. 

The NH Republicans want this to go away, so that they don't have to ask for her resignation. They'd rather keep a known white supremacist in the legislature than lose the seat, even when they have a 26 seat majority. 

Forsythe Resigns, Hinch Sings New Tune

Robert Forsythe in 2014


It was only yesterday that the story of NH State Rep. Robert Forsythe broke. He's been charged with felony domestic abuse for choking a pregnant partner. The whole sordid story of his arrest was reported by the Concord Monitor

This was the NH House Minority Leader's reaction to the arrest yesterday:

House Republican Leader Dick Hinch condemned the alleged behavior, saying “domestic violence and assault are unacceptable and wrong and have no place in our society,” but he stopped short of calling on Forsythe to resign.

“Rep. Forsythe is the only person who can put pen to paper, and sign a resignation letter,” Hinch said. “The people of Boscawen have the right to ask him to resign if they believe he can no longer represent them. They also have the ability to vote for alternative candidates, including write-ins, if they believe they no longer want Rep. Forsythe to represent them in Concord.”

I noted the difference in Hinch's reaction to the arrest of a fellow Republican and the arrest of a Democrat on domestic violence charges in a blog post yesterday.

Poor Hinch. After all that waffling, Governor Sununu came right out and called for Forsythe's resignation. 

Today, the Monitor reports that Forsythe has resigned:

In a phone call Wednesday, Forsythe, 38, said he had chosen to step down after consulting with fellow representatives and Rep. Dick Hinch, the House Republican Leader...

Hinch confirmed the resignation in his own statement Wednesday afternoon.

“I spoke with Rep. Forsythe this morning and encouraged him to resign from the House, which he has now done,” Hinch stated. “He faces very serious charges that he will need to answer to in a court of law. Domestic violence and assault are unacceptable and wrong and have no place in our society.”

What a difference a day makes, eh Hinchy?

Forsythe was running unopposed in his district. He told the Monitor that the charges against him won't hold up in court.  This isn't his first run-in with the law,  in 2019 he was charged with violating a protective order. Forsythe sponsored a bill this year which seems intended to weaken protective orders and protect abusers. It would excuse a defendant for violating an order if it could be proven that the plaintiff requested the contact. The bill was  killed by the House. It doesn't take Dick Tracy to see what that was all about. 

We know he has engaged in violence against women and he loves guns.  This is the kind of profile that should be taken with the utmost seriousness. It's the same profile of nearly every domestic terrorist/mass shooter. 

House Minority Leader Dick Hinch's first reaction was to protect him. Just as he attempted to protect Robert "Red Pill" Fisher. Hinch wasn't shy about demanding that State Rep. Sherry Frost should resign because she used the word "fuck" on her personal Facebook page. The difference? Frost is a Democrat. 

The NH GOP has a man problem. When training on domestic violence and harassment was mandated by leadership (the kind of training any professional has to go through in the workplace) a number of the Republican men (and one of the women) refused to go through the training. GOP legislators Kyle Tasker, Eric Schleien, and James Spillane have all been arrested on charges related to illegal conduct with women. Tasker is in prison, Schleien moved out of state, but Spillane, who was once arrested for trying to strangle his wife, is still a representative. 

Forsythe is gone. Dick Hinch should be ousted as well. His idea of leadership is covering for people who aren't fit to hold elected office. Protecting abusers should not be tolerated. It sure is hard to make a strong case for that though, given who is at the very top of the GOP ticket. 

Why Aren't All These Guns Making Us Safer?

It was a deadly weekend. On Saturday, a gunman in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, shot and killed 22 people, and wounded 26 more. Early Sunday morning, a gunman killed 9 people in a nightlife district in Dayton, Ohio. 

The weekend before, a gunman shot and killed 4 people and wounded 13 others at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, CA. 

I thought all these guns were supposed to be making us safer?

Meanwhile, here in NH, three gun safety bills languish in limbo, waiting for the attention of our governor. On Monday, August 5, there was a rally  at the Legislative Office Building in Concord, where members of gun safety groups and other concerned citizens called upon the governor to sign the bills. The room was packed with people. 

Not everyone in the room was heartbroken about the slaughter of their fellow humans. Some attendees were so dickhurt by the idea that some people were talking about gun safety, that they showed up with their guns. The guy with the long gun in the photo is Brennan Robinson, a member of the Free State Project, who very obviously came in with the intention of turning the media's attention to him. 

He succeeded admirably. Both WMUR and NHPR gave him the last word in their stories. 

This is emblematic of the NH media, which operates with GOP as their default setting. I expect  it from WMUR - hell, I've seen it in the past, from the same reporter.

I cannot wrap my head around the shoddiness of this reporting. Not a single reporter who covered this event thought to ask, "Hey, pal - these folks are all here because of gun violence - do you think it's really a good idea to bring GUNS into a room crowded with people - especially since you fit the visual profile of a domestic terrorist?" 

These are men who get up in the morning in the safest state in the country, and put on their strapons before they dare leave their houses. And we are all supposed to bow and scrape before their freedumb, because their right to play GI Joe is more important than our right to live. 

I don't expect Governor Sununu to sign those gun bills. His first act in office was to sign a bill that repealed the concealed carry license process. Gundamentalists are his base. 

I don't have any confidence that there will ever be a legislative solution to the wholesale slaughter, either at the state or national level. 

What I do know is this - people are going to stop going out. They won't go to fairs, festivals, concerts, or movies. They won't go shopping in brick and mortar stores. They won't go to bars and restaurants. And brother, when it starts to hit the bottom lines of business - then we'll see some change. Capitalism may be what changes our gun laws. 

To help along the process, I suggest that before you go to a store, a venue, a bar or restaurant that you call ahead and ask if they allow guns inside. NH is an open carry state - BUT - there's a provision built into the law:

"Businesses have the to right to ban firearms from their property, Merrigan said, and can ask customers who are carrying firearms, openly or concealed, to leave.

Customers who don’t leave a business when requested can be charged with criminal trespassing."

So call and ask, and decide for yourself whether you want to go there or not. If you see a person with a gun in a business - call the police. There is no way for you to know if he is one of the mythical "good guys with guns" or a domestic terrorist. Complaint to the management. Leave your shopping cart and walk out of the store. 

Enough is enough. And dammit, NH media - do a better job. 

Failure to Invest

Every two years, the governor creates a budget and hands it off to the House. The House Finance Committee uses the governor’s budget as a sort of template, and writes a whole budget (in two parts), that includes where money needs to go, and where it’s coming from. When it passes the House, it moves on to Senate Finance, where it is further altered. One reason for this is that by the time a budget reaches Senate Finance, there are better state revenue estimates to work with. Any House bill that is amended by the Senate goes back to the House, where they vote to concur with the changes, or not concur. In the event of non-concurrence, the House can either let the bill die, or ask for a committee of conference. The budget for the next biennium is currently being worked on in two committees of conference.

Governor Sununu began threatening to veto the budget in early March, weeks before it ever reached the Senate. He was all puffed up and boasting of his extensive collection of red pens, and how he was going to veto all the “dumb ideas.” That was also two months before he suddenly announced, after months of hinting at a Senate campaign, that he was going to run for reelection. 

One of Sununu’s pet peeves is the paid family and medical leave program that is included in the budget. He and his minions have labeled it an income tax, and bray about that at every opportunity. Sununu cooked up a voluntary family leave plan with Governor Scott of Vermont, using state workers as the pool. The Vermont legislature had no interest in this plan, and created an entirely different one, just as NH did. Maine is also working on a family leave program. 

It’s the kind of benefit offered in states that are thinking ahead. In NH, we bemoan the fact that our young people don’t stay here. They don’t stay because a college education here will saddle them with the highest student loan debt in the nation, and when they leave school, they can’t find a good paying job, nor can they afford housing. NH also bemoans the fact that we can’t attract skilled workers.

I have a friend who is among the 16 percent of NH residents who works in Massachusetts. He does this because he couldn’t get a good paying job in his technical field here in the state he lives in. He’ll be eligible for the Massachusetts paid family and medical leave program that begins at the first of the year. By working out of state he gets better pay and better benefits. That is how a state attracts skilled workers. 

NH has the lowest minimum wage in New England, at $7.25. NH bemoans the fact that there aren’t enough workers to fill all the jobs that need doing, many of them being low wage service jobs, but we don’t want to pay people to do the work. The low wages combined with the cost of housing may have something to do with that lack of workers. The governor is expected to veto the bill that would increase the minimum wage to $12 an hour.

Governor Sununu, on the other hand, is the highest paid governor our state has ever had. Governors in recent decades accepted reduced pay, as a nod to the poverty of our state agencies, and as a note of humility from the wealthy. (Poor people are not elected governor in NH, or anywhere else.) Governor Hassan was paid $110,400 each of the four years she served. Governor Lynch reduced his pay by $4,000 in 2009, during the recession. Governor Craig Benson didn’t even take a salary during his term. He gave his pay as bonus money for state workers. Sununu is being paid $20,000 a year more than Governor Hassan was. He received a pay raise on his first day in office – a raise negotiated by the state employee’s union, the same union he’s refused to negotiate a contract with, because the contract includes…you guessed it, pay raises. 

I love this state, but sometimes our arrogance is stupefying. We think that people will just come here to spend copiously, without our investing in the reasons they come – like our state parks, which continue to be inadequately funded by user fees.

New Hampshire has been skating by on spending little for decades, with GOP legislatures putting off work that needed to be done because they wanted to create the illusion that The Pledge works. Meanwhile, the state is being sued again for the terrible way we fund education, and the governor is getting ready to make a big Trumpian noise and veto a budget that does something good for workers and families. Other states are investing in workers and families, and attracting skilled workers, and NH is making the same mistakes over and over again, and expecting different results. 

Published as an op-ed in the June 21 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

NH Death Penalty Optics

Michael George Haddad

The last time the State of New Hampshire executed anyone was in 1939. For the last 20 years, there has been a bill every biennium to repeal the death penalty. In 2000, a repeal bill passed both houses and was vetoed by Governor Jeanne Shaheen. 

In 2019, there is an impressive bipartisan coalition supporting HB 455, a bill that would change the death penalty in NH to life without parole. It seems likely that the bill will pass in both the House and Senate. Governor Sununu has said that he will veto it. There could well be, for the first time in 20 years, enough support for repeal to override the governor’s veto.

I’ve written about the death penalty several times over the years. We know it is expensive – more expensive than life in prison. We know it is not a deterrent. We know that people of color are more likely to be sent to death row. We know that a great many people have been wrongly convicted, spent years on death row, and then exonerated. We also know that at least one innocent person has been wrongly murdered by the state, in the name of “justice.” Above all, we know…well, not all of we, but most of we know that the death penalty is not about justice. It is about vengeance.

As the old saying goes, we kill people to show them that killing is wrong. The state should not be in the business of killing its citizens.

A big public hearing resulted in hours of testimony this week. There was testimony from murder victim’s family members. There was testimony from people who were wrongly convicted and sent to death row.  There was also testimony from former US Senator Kelly Ayotte, who breezed in to emphasize how important it is that we kill Michael Addison, the only person on death row in NH. Ayotte the NH Attorney General vigorously pursued the death penalty case against Addison, and used it as a springboard to a single term in the Senate. 

Michael Addison was charged with killing Manchester Police Officer Michael Briggs in 2006. In 2006, a millionaire named John Brooks was convicted of capital murder for his role in hiring people to kill his former handyman, whom he believed had stolen from him. In New Hampshire, contract killing is a capital offense.  John Brooks was given two life sentences without parole. In 1997, Gordon E. Perry killed police officer Jeremy Charron in Epsom, NH. After pleading guilty to capital murder, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. 

When repeal advocates talk about how the death penalty isn’t equally applied, this is exactly what they mean. Gordon E. Perry is white. John Brooks is rich and white. Michael Addison is black. John Brooks was convicted the same year as Addison, in the same state. Kelly Ayotte did not zealously pursue his case. Gordon Perry and Michael Addison both killed police officers. Only one is on death row. 

Our Governor has said that he will veto a repeal because he “stands with law enforcement.” Our governor stands with law enforcement when it’s convenient. Sununu’s first legislative priority after being elected to his first term was to eliminate concealed carry licenses for firearms. Law enforcement vigorously opposed that bill. Sununu didn’t listen to them, never mind stand with them. Governor Sununu is a Trump acolyte, and we know that Trump loves the death penalty. Even after the five young black men known as the Central Park Five were exonerated after falsely being convicted of the rape, assault, and attempted murder of jogger Trisha Mieli, Donald Trump continued to call for their executions.

Civilized countries don’t engage in execution. The United States is increasingly uncivilized, particularly in the area of race and religion. We don’t hear any discussion of how, exactly, the state will kill Michael Addison. The methods sanctioned by our state are hanging and lethal injection. Lethal injection drugs are no longer available. The countries that manufacture them don’t sell them to us any more, because they don’t believe in the death penalty. Will New Hampshire purchase other, questionable drugs? Or will New Hampshire rebuild the gallows that was dismantled at the state prison in 1994?

We should, perhaps, take a moment to consider this.  New Hampshire hasn’t conducted an execution since 1939. Will we bring the death penalty out of mothballs to kill a black man? Would we hang him? Tiny, white, New Hampshire proudly clings to the first in the nation presidential primary, despite rumblings from other states that we’re tiny, white, and clueless about the rest of the country. If the moral arguments against the death penalty don’t sway folks, perhaps the very real potential of losing that exalted primary status will. 

Published as an op-ed in the February 22, 2019 issue of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

Paying Attention.

The leaves are changing, summer is over, the primary has come and gone, and so has veto day at the legislature. Yes, it’s time to think ahead, dear readers. Before you can say pumpkin spice, the legislature will be back in session. For some of us, this means a welcome return to the kind of good, nerdy fun we enjoy during session months. There’s good news – the New Hampshire General Court website has been retooled, so it’s easier to read and navigate. 

Any hard-core nerds out there will appreciate the way the media stream is now set up.  All recorded House or Senate sessions are archived, easily accessible. This means you can watch the recordings any time. You should. Most people don’t have time to go to the State House on a weekly basis to sit in the gallery and watch the sessions. The videos are the next best thing. The camera is glued to the front of the chamber, so you miss the side groups constantly forming and reforming on the sides of the room, but you can hear everyone who speaks about a bill, and watch the votes. 

The daily calendar of hearings is right on the front page. Even when the House or Senate isn’t in session, there are committee hearings going on – even after the legislature has gone on hiatus in June. Many of the bills that were sent to study committees are worked on all summer and into the fall.

Why should you care about this? What happens in Concord affects your life, 365 days a year. The goings on at the State House may not be as exciting as whatever is going on in Congress or the White House, but it is often more important. We NH voters, have incredible access to our elected officials. We can influence the legislative process. We have more power than voters in most other states, because of the ridiculous size of our legislature. Also - legislators behave better when they know we’re watching.
 

On September 10, House incumbents running for office could begin to file LSR’s (the beginning of a bill) for the 2019 session. The last day of that filing period is Sept. 21. The general election is November 6. On November 14, all elected representatives can begin filing LSRs for the upcoming session. December 21 is the last day for filing. These dates apply only to the House. The Senate doesn’t seem to have any deadlines when it comes to the filing of LSRs.

So far, there have been 27 LSRs filed for 2019. None of them have been filed (so far) by Carroll County incumbents. That doesn’t mean they don’t have them ready to go, it just means they don’t want any public record of them before the general election. It also doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention, because as you should have learned by now, decisions that affect the north country are made by people who live in the southern part of the state. Most of those deciders have no knowledge of  (or interest in) the needs of the northern part of our state

Representative Robert Elliot of Salem has filed an LSR that would provide that tax dollars for public education wouldn’t be limited to public education. House Majority Leader Dick Hinch, from Merrimack, filed an LSR to establish education savings accounts for students. This means (as I predicted in my last column) we’ll be seeing a return of last year’s voucher bill. We learned last year that the removal of those tax dollars for public education would cause a significant increase in our state property taxes, which are already some of the highest in the nation. Hinch and Elliot are both Republicans. Republicans make a big deal of taking The Pledge, but have no compunctions about legislation that will hit you square in your ability to hang on to your house. Fiscal responsibility? That isn’t what I’d call it.

Governor Sununu desperately wants to pass a voucher bill, as you may recall from the shenanigans around it last year. He imagines that it will pave his way to the US Senate in 2020. A huge increase in your property taxes is a small price to pay to send the publicly affable Sununu to DC, right? I say publicly affable, because he’s known to be rather shouty behind closed doors when he doesn’t get his way with the GOP caucus. He wasn’t too happy about the recent overriding of his vetoes.

The only Carroll County Republican State Representative who didn’t vote for last year’s voucher bill (SB 193) was Karel Crawford, who was excused that day. All of the others were eager to increase your property taxes. Remember that when you go in to vote on November 6. They count on you not paying attention, which is exactly why you should. 

Published as an op-ed in the September 21, 2018 edition of the Conway Daily Sun 

The Gold Standard

New Hampshire is a state with no income tax and no sales tax. A state where we are constantly warned that we must live within our means. For decades, the Republicans who govern our state have worked overtime to ensure that we have such limited means that we can’t ever fix anything that needs fixing, which is why 12% of our bridges are red listed for “structural impairments.” Our intentionally limited means ensure that our state parks are in desperate need of maintenance and repair. 

One might think that in a state where tourism is our number two business, we’d want to make that investment, but our limited means do not permit. Speaking of number two business, we have closed rest areas in Antrim, Epsom, and Shelburne, in places where tourists would undoubtedly like to stop. They were all closed in order to save money. Perhaps we could reopen them if the tourists signed an affidavit saying that in exchange for using the rest room, they swear they’ll buy a case of Hennessy on the way out of state? (Paying cash, of course.)

Given our constant state of poverty, I was surprised to read what Governor Sununu had to say at the annual spring luncheon for Seacoast Republican Women. From the story in Fosters:  “Despite Democratic criticism of his budget he said, “we have more money than we know what to do with.” 

If that’s the case, it seems our governor lacks imagination. I’ve tweeted suggestions to him about things we might do with all that money. Build a secure psychiatric unit that isn’t part of a prison, for treating our people who have mental illness. Eliminate the shameful wait list for developmental disability services. Fix all the red listed bridges. Open up those closed rest areas, fix the state parks…the list is endless.

He also said, “We slipped for a long time, but we’re back. New Hampshire is the gold standard. A 2017 CNBC report found that NH has the second worst infrastructure in the nation. We don’t seem to be using any of that gold to repair our roads, bridges, dams, water systems, etc. In fact, given those closed rest areas, we don’t even qualify as American Standard.

I’ve said it before (and I’ll say it again!) that NH is the seventh wealthiest state. We are intentionally starving our state, so that we can continue to fail to invest in the present and the future. 

Our politicians are proud to take The Pledge, which refers to the Mel Thomson/William Loeb pledge against the creation of a state income tax or sales tax. The Pledge became popular in the early 70’s and continues to be GOP cult dogma.

New Hampshire’s peculiar system of funding our state government through fees and property taxes results in an underfunded state government. It isn’t the fault of the folks at the DMV that you wait for hours in line or can’t get through on the phone. They are chronically understaffed on purpose. That understaffing makes you the public unhappy, and willing to buy into the first tenet of GOP gospel: government is the problem. It certainly is when they’re running it. 

It’s all a false “economy.” As the 7^thwealthiest state, NH is certainly capable of generating revenue. Our secret is that we don’t want to. One thing the Republican Party fears above all is having enough money to fix the things that were deliberately neglected for decades. The scaremongering around The Pledge is key to their continued dominance in the state. 

A recent twitter exchange was a perfect illustration. Greg Moore is the head of Americans for Prosperity NH. AFP is an arm of the Koch brothers that has managed to achieve a disproportionate amount of influence over our state finances. Greg tweeted out that NH revenues are up in May, and claimed Trump’s tax reform is driving the NH economy forward. A reply to that tweet came from Grant Bosse, who wrote, “Don’t tell them! They’ll come back to spend it!”  (He was referring to the legislature.) Grant Bosse is the editor of the Union Leader’s editorial page. Before that, he worked for the Josiah Bartlett Center, the right wing think tank funded by the Koch brothers. 

That is, of course, easily translated into “spending is bad.” A successful business that invested in itself would be lauded, particularly if that came in the form of higher wages for workers. In NH success is defined as austerity. We don’t invest in education or any real safety net. We don’t even fix what is broken. To say that NH has “more money than we know what to do with,” in the face of our state’s many desperate needs is truly an obscenity.    

Published as an op-ed in the June 8, 2018 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

Mired in the Dark Ages

Child marriage laws are in the news. The Florida legislature just voted to increase the marriage age from 16 to 17.  This is a compromise. Advocates fighting child marriage wanted to raise the age to 18, but that was too much for the legislature. After all, what if she’s pregnant?? Does forcing a pregnant child into marriage wave some kind of magic improvement wand over the situation?

Between the years of 2000 and 2015, there were 16,400 child marriages in Florida.  There were 207,000 child marriages in 41 states during those years. (There isn’t data for every state.) A whopping 87% of those marriages were girls, and most of them were married to adult men – men over the age of 18. Try to imagine the reaction if the story were that 87% of teenaged boys were being married off to adult women. I feel certain that the deafening silence around girls would turn to howls if it were boys.

In most states the age of consent is 16 or 17. Yet we don’t call it rape when a girl who is too young to legally consent to sexual relations is married off to her rapist. We look down on the “uncivilized” countries where child marriage is a regular occurrence, but we are one of those countries.  The highest numbers are in Florida, Texas, Kentucky, and Virginia.

As much as we might want to believe that this only happens in the southern states, we know better. Last year we learned that in New Hampshire, girls can be married at 13 and boys at 14. Last year, a bill to change that, was defeated in the NH House. Some of our male legislators bemoaned the thought that a young man going off to fight for his country wouldn’t be able to marry his pregnant teen girlfriend – as if he were a WWII Doughboy heading off to fight with “You’re a Grand Old Flag” playing in the background. Defending child marriage is defending child rape, and adult men having sex with teenaged girls is something our society has turned a blind eye to for a very long time.

A girl who is pregnant and married before she legally has any rights is a prime target for abuse. She is likely to enter a cycle of poverty that she will never recover from. Thinking that marrying this girl off washes away some kind of sin is ridiculous. The sin is adult men having sex with underage girls. The sin is men fighting against increasing the marriage age because they think it is their right to have sex with girl children.

This year another bill to raise the marriage age is before the legislature. It’s being touted as a “compromise.” It raises the age for both boys and girls to 16. If the bill passes, at least when an underage girl marries an adult man, she will have gone through puberty.

The death penalty is also back in the news in NH. A bill to change the penalty for capital murder to life imprisonment has come out of the Senate with a large, bipartisan group of sponsors. The minute the bill was announced, Governor Sununu announced he would veto it. This announcement came before there was a single hearing, before any of the sponsors offered testimony, and probably before he read it. The Governor made a big point of saying that he stands with victims and law enforcement. Last year, when Sununu took office, his first priority was getting a bill passed to eliminate the concealed carry license for a handgun. The NH Chiefs of Police were strongly opposed to that, as were victim’s rights groups. He ignored them both, preferring to pander to gundamentalists and the NRA.

There isn’t anything new to say about the death penalty. It’s barbaric, and perpetuating it only serves to put us in the same category as other countries that have terrible records on human rights. It’s not a deterrent. No one in New Hampshire ever thinks, “Ooops, I’d better go kill my wife/girlfriend/boss/neighbor in: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, or Maine because they don’t have the death penalty there.”

At a Senate hearing this week, it was clear that the largest objection to eliminating the death penalty is the fear that the state won’t get to kill Michael Briggs, our only prisoner on death row. An officer testified that the existence of the death penalty sends the message that we (the people) have their (the cops) back. If I were a cop, I think I’d prefer the people had my back while I was alive – in the form of good working conditions, training, pay, and health coverage.

The bipartisan support behind the bill could increase to a number sufficient to override the governor’s veto. The state should not be in the killing business. It’s time for NH to move out of the dark ages.

This was published as an op-ed in the March 16, 2018 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper